Looking to buy a Laptop

I will be graduating from college in about 4 months and for my graduation gift my mom wants to buy me a Laptop. I know there are some people here who either work at/with or are some way affiliated with Dell. I am just looking for some opinions on Dell laptops, or alternatives. I will primarily be using the laptop for a mobile workstation (graphics, video editing, 3d work) so it needs to be semi beefy, primarily in the CPU department, but I dont need heavy GPU power.

Right now I am leaning toward the Dell XPS line laptops since they seem to be the most affordable. I am also looking at the Dell Precision M65 system. Budget is around 2,000 so I have a lot of options, but once again its not for about 4 months or so till I will make the purchase.

Ok, well when it comes to size I am looking for a mid size laptop. I dont mind lugging around a little bit of weight, but I want to avoid one of those 15-20lbs beasts.

Feature wise, I really want a system with 2GB ram, Dual Core and a decent 7200rpm hard-drive but I dont need a heavy duty GPU. On crusing the Dell site it seems its hard to get the balance that I am looking for since they assume that if you want a decent sized laptop you want a high end GPU as well. Their just arnt enough options.

Also, I wish I could buy a system without any RAM.. since Dell charges an awful lot for ram. I can get 2GB DDR2 corsair Value ram for around $160-180. Just for the upgrade from 1GB - 2GB at Dell is close to 200$ alone.

Basically like I said in my first post I am looking for a system I can use as a semi workstation replacment. Mostly at the office since I dont have the best system at work. I do a lot of graphic design & 3D work, thus the heavy CPU and Ram desires.

Thanks for the heads up on new models coming out, I will keep an eye out for them.

I realize I can customize, but are the options more limited on the website than they would be if I called or something? It seems their are usually only 1 to 2 GPU's available for each model. But if you go to the Workstation line (ie. M65) they only offer the Quadro mobile GPU. Which one of these would be nice, its complete overkill for what I need. I could get away with a 128MB card (256 would probably be close to the same price though) and cards assosiated with that performance level.

Ok, How about coupons and such? I know dell runs offers all the time, is there a good place to look for these coupons? Or is it one of those things that if you are meant to know than you will know?